Wednesday, February 8, 2017

[Updated from 2/5/17]Having failed to win the GOP Presidential nomination or a post in the Donald Trump administration where even debate bumbler and bad dancer Rick Perry scored a key cabinet post, WI right-wing Gov. and Kohl's secret shopper Scott Walker has defaulted to running hard for another four years of taxpayer-paid mansion housing, free travel, unlimited time off and $12,000+ monthly checks.His bid for a third term, however, means executing a substantial set of pivots, as they say in the trade these says, to make voters forget that in his previous budgets he'd inflicted on the people massive cuts to education, tax-increases on low-income workers and obstruction to rural broadband expansion - - just to mention a few.So Walker has already signaled that his next budget will include some new spending on education, some new spending on rural broadband services, and some givebacks of the tax increases inflicted on lower-income workers - - betting that citizens will forget how deeply he had already cut or withheld those very funds in early budgets and actions.Update - - Note also that Walker's new spending on education does not cover all his previous cuts, and like the rightist social engineering at the foundation of his Act 10 wage cuts, his proposed funding increases to the UW system also come with new state-imposed controls, such as mandatory internships or work experience before a degree is awarded, and various pressures on teachers to add course hours regardless of the impact on their research and writing obligations. Clearly he knows or cares nothing about how a university or a teacher works, except how they can be used for his re-election.One more question: Where is all this new funding to come from? Walker will not raise any taxes, so whose ox gets gored? Still unresolved: the fiscal and physical mess that are Wisconsin's highways.Will Trump write Walker a stimulus check he can cash to fill the potholes and keep the Southeastern Wisconsin so-called Freeway plan from turning to a half-century of zipper lanes and double the rush hour congestion delays?And to further distract voters from these pivots and problems, Walker has gone to war on Twitter, Trump-style, against US Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin - - also on the '18 ballot - - for announcing in advance her opposition to Trump's US Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.Hoping that you will forget that Walker's party, including GOP US Senator-without-a-record Ron Johnson, wouldn't even give Barack Obama's nominee to the same Supreme Court seat a hearing and a vote to ensure a nomination for what turned out to be GOP President Trump.

2 comments:

Sue
said...

How's he going to run for office if he won't run for office? It will be interesting to see how he plans on getting elected without getting out among the unwashed masses.Who's going to support his run? Paul Ryan - now that citizens are finally figuring out what 'revamping Medicare' means, won't be a help. Trump is afraid of WI now that he's figured out that his victory tour schtick isn't holding like he thought it would. Ron Johnson generally hides. Reince Priebus is stained by association with Trump.I don't have great faith in my fellow Wisconsinites but there sure seems to be a raising of awareness that wasn't here a few months ago. When it's time to start running and people are well on the road to realizing what's going to happen to their health care, retirement and medicare, it might finally dawn on voters that their problems do not lie with the teachers and snowplow drivers among them.

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James Rowen, a writer and consultant, has worked for newspapers, and as the senior Mayoral staffer, in Madison and Milwaukee, WI. This blog began on 2/2/ 2007. Posts run also at various news sites, including The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's "Purple Wisconsin."